Bored by all the apartment construction going on in central Eugene? Here’s a development of a different flavor: A four-story storage-unit building, for folks in new apartments who don’t have enough space for all their stuff.
Denver, Colorado-based developer Donald Conty says he plans to start construction next week on a vacant lot next to the city’s fire station at 13th Avenue and Willamette Street, near downtown. The building will have about 600 units in assorted sizes, he says.
Eugene already has plenty of storage-unit complexes. But most are single-story, and are on the city’s west and north fringes. Conty says his centrally located complex will cater to University of Oregon students and homeowners who are downsizing.
“There is an absolute demand” for the units, he says. Eugene’s high rents and home prices place a premium on living space, so residents “are using storage more as a supplement.”
The half-acre lot is zoned commercial and sits immediately north of the six-story The Tate condominium building, where some owners are not thrilled about their incoming neighbor.
Conty bought the property last month for an undisclosed sum from a Utah developer who had drafted plans for the storage building. The site has a colorful history. For years it had two old buildings, one housing a radio station, Lane County records show. A previous owner demolished the buildings about five years ago. The land became a gathering spot for unhoused people, says Mark Hudson, a condo owner in The Tate. Several years ago, an encampment caught fire, he recalls.
Hudson lives in a second-story unit looking out onto the storage-building lot. Storage “seems like a very inappropriate use of the land,” he says. He hoped for something “more in the spirit of the town,” like affordable apartments.
A previous owner of the parcel began working on the storage-building concept six years ago. A handful of neighbors objected to its proposed appearance and traffic impacts. But the land is zoned for commercial use, and city planners ruled in 2022 that the size, traffic flow, exterior design and landscaping satisfy city requirements.
Plus, it’s an efficient use of land, compared to single-story storage complexes, senior planner Reid Verner writes in the city’s decision.
“It is important that complementary amenities such as storage are available in urban locations where housing density is encouraged and often corresponds with smaller living units,” Verner writes. “The proposed storage facility will be an optional urban service to provide a dwelling unit extension for people residing near Eugene’s urban center.”
Until 2005, a succession of radio station companies owned the property. It was then bought by a Eugene investment group, which in 2021 sold it to a Utah-based company. That company then tore down the buildings and secured land-use and building permits for the four-story storage structure. But the company never started construction. Instead, last month it sold the property to Conty’s group, DDB OR Eugene LLC for an undisclosed amount, according to the deed.
Lane County says the empty lot has a market value of $1.2 million.
Conty declined to say how much he expects to spend on the development. Construction will take a year, he said.
He and his business partners have developed about 25 other storage buildings, he said.
Members of his development team are familiar with Eugene and have children at the University of Oregon, he said.
Plans show renters will drive into the building to load and unload their items.
The building footprint takes up 21,600 square feet of the 25,500 square foot lot, the plans show.
The building “will pretty much take up every square inch of the lot,” says neighbor Hudson.
The building’s total area will be about 80,000 square feet.
It won’t be Eugene-Springfield first or largest multi-story storage complex. U-Haul last year completed a five-story, 143,000-square-foot storage building on Highway 99 in Eugene. Portland developer Joe Weston’s U-Store Self Storage built one in Springfield’s Gateway area a decade ago.
Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.